The virtual conference will focus on US American imaginaries related to neo/noir and thriller narratives. We wish to collect presentations that deal with noir broadly intended as, after all, “noir itself is a kind of mediascape—a loosely related collection of perversely mysterious motifs or scenarios that circulate through all the information technologies” (Naremore 2008, 255). Rooted in the works of crime writers and sensational stories, drawing inspiration on German Expressionism, and evolving into ramifications such as cyberpunk fiction, noir modes have been subtly pervasive and, to some extent, revived through the rise of true crime narratives.
We accept proposals that look at texts across popular culture media, including film, graphic narratives, TV series, genre literature, music, games, podcasts, and mocku/documentary.

Possible topics may be (but are not limited to):

• Classic noir film and its connections to gothic, horror, sci-fi, and western genres
• The neo/noir as a media landscape and how the mode adapts to the medium
• Neo/noir and thriller intersections with race and ethnicity
• Noir modes and intersections in popular culture and texts otherwise not labeled as “noir”
• Crime narratives and their cross-genre intersections, including true crime, psychological horror, and noir
• The depiction of violence in neo/noir and thriller media
• Social media and crime-related morbidity
• Neo/noir and the depiction of moral values, gray zones, and boundaries
• Neo/noir and thriller aesthetics, use of light and color, tropes, conventions, and archetypes
• The sound of thriller: how sound has characterized the genre and its ramifications
• Erotic thriller narratives, esp. of the late 1980s and early 1990s wave
• Femmes fatales and hardboiled men: gender characterization in noir narratives
• The construction of suspense in noir and thriller media
• Retro-noir fantasies in film and comics
• Crisscrossed: how noir plots are constructed and the type of tropes, values, and mechanisms that come into play in their unfolding
• True crime and the construction of fictionalized real murder narratives

Deadline for submission: JUNE 17, 2024

We accept abstract proposals for individual presentations (≈ 250 words), as well as full panels (≈ 250-word description of the panel plus brief abstracts of all papers). Please, email your proposal to popmec.noir@gmail.com as a single attachment (.doc, .docx, .odt) including name, affiliation (if any), and contact email.

If you have any doubt or inquiry, feel welcome to drop us a line at popmec.noir@gmail.com